Reviews

"Our Man in Havana" is a spy novel that I’ve laughed at loud a good few times. It has an absurd premise and even sillier characters. I’d have liked it more without it switching so often between comedy and seriousness. Wormold is an amazing protagonist that has a knack for lying his way through any problems. This trait coupled with luck, makes him resolve dilemmas, which solutions wouldn't work otherwise. It makes it one of a kind book.

jedibrothers's review against another edition

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hopeful lighthearted medium-paced

3.75

A truely entertaining read. As old Wormold tries to navigate divorced life with his daughter in Havana, he becomes a farce of a spy for his hone country of England. Not sure where this was going to go almost halfway in when the pieces started falling into place and I couldn't put it down.

Funny but emotional at times it's a well written satire of espionage while exploring a persons loyalties and who they ought do right by.

jibraun's review against another edition

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funny mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This is my first Graham Greene novel, but it certainly won't be my last. Greene, a famous 20th Century British novelist, delivered possibly the most British and most satirical novel I have read in Our Man in Havana. Greene bifurcated his books into "novels" (read: literary) and "entertainments" (read: more fun). This falls into the latter, while still managing to have literary flourishes dropped in throughout the work -- showing that Greene can become literary when he wants.

Greene creates the character of James Wormold, a British expatriate, living in Havana, Cuba immediately prior to the Cuban revolution. Greene published this novel mere months before Fulgencio Bautista resigned on New Years' Eve 1958, an historical event immortalized on film in The Godfather Part 2. Greene's novel contains many prescient predictions, including the impending fall of the Bautista regime, that many of Bautista's supporters would flee to Miami, and the Cuban missile crisis.

But this work doesn't only standout due to its predictions. Greene penned a taut novel full of satire about the global espionage game during the Cold War, lampooning the masters all the way at the top and the agents like Wormold all the way to the bottom. Greene's work is full of symbolic jabs at MI6, the nuclear arms race, those involved, etc. But he also managed to throw in several one-liners that actually made me laugh, a rare feat when I'm reading.

I did find the love story to be a little ham-fisted and rushed. But my appreciation for the satire, the historical setting, the plot-driven spy story, and fantastic prose won me over. This was the rare fun novel that managed to be literary and insightful at the same time. Point being, while Greene may have called it "entertainment," I think it rises above that level, being something more of a summer blockbuster with an important thematic message behind it.

5 stars.

bean_season's review against another edition

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Not really my cup of tea. Read it because I asked a loved one what novel he remembered really enjoying recently. I'm a little disillusioned that he liked this enough to recommend. He did qualify that it was just the first thing that popped in his head. His nonfiction recs have all been golden. Just seems a little retrograde and jarring that this would have floated his boat, but I'm not going to tell him I read it and I'm going to try to forget about it. I guess it was mildly witty with the daughter's dialogue sometimes

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